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Month: December 2017

There is a low mist in the woods. It is a good day to study lichens. The view so confined it compels your attention to near objects, and the white background reveals the disks of the lichens distinctly. They appear more loose, flowing, expanded, flattened out, the colors brighter for the damp. The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist (or are seen dimly) like shields whose devices you would fain read. The trees appear all at once covered with their crop of lichens and mosses of all kinds, -flat and tearful are some, distended by moisture. This is their solstice, and your eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things only. Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall, the livid green of some, the fruit of others. They eclipse the trees they cover. Ah, beautiful is decay! True, as Thales said, the world was made out of water. That is the principle of all things.

According to Google there are exactly 60 minutes before sundown. While idly exploring YouTube I couldn’t help but look up into the golden-blue skies and notice a few dozen (or even a hundred) flying monkeys up there. Of course by that I mean corvids. Couldn’t even keep count. They were flying northwest (or perhaps north by northwest) on some sort of invisible aerial highway:

Couldn’t tell you where they were coming from but……Seemed to be passing over towards the zone over Marshall Ave (by the railroad tracks, between Snelling and Cleveland). I’ve seen them hanging out in the tallest of treetops over in that area before. Here’s a broader view of their observed flight pattern today:

These birds seemed to be flying in a coordinated fashion. In the few moments where I’ve seen so many crows there was sometimes a commotion due to risk: Couldn’t see any birds of prey, but one lingering bird in the back of the formation was absolutely huge and barely flapping its wings. Seemed to be gliding more than flying but was still as black as night and unlikely to be an eagle or a hawk. Whatever.

As I was typing this I heard a few crows right in front of the house. Gotta go grab some snacks for them. Until next time!

And no, I don’t mean N-Acetyl Cysteine. I’m talking about the nucleus accumbens. This devilish bit of brain tissue is one that seeks for its larger meat-sack the experience of reward and short-term pleasure. To be honest the NAC isn’t the only zone related to that tendency: the frontal striatum and a few other areas are instrumental as well. To finally reach the end of the fall semester a bit bruised and battered reveals to me that my own proclivity for pressuring pleasure to pop up in the present is pretty problematic.

So the quest now is to develop skills and habits that enable the delay of gratification. In order to conduct this oversized ganglion through larger and longer movements I’ll be getting in touch with some professionals in the area who focus on this issue specifically. How exciting! Will post updates as that moves along. Here’s some soul food for any of you mind-wanderers wondering what to read about to get a sense of the issue.